Saboteur is typically
Hitchcock. Its succession of incredible climaxes, its mounting tautness and suspense,
its mood of terror and impending doom could
have been achieved by no one else. That is a
great tribute to a brilliant director.

Like all Hitchcock films, Saboteur is excellently acted. Norman Lloyd is genuinely plausible as the ferret-like culprit who sets the
fatal airplane factory on fire. Robert Cummings lacks variation in his performance
of the thick-headed, unjustly accused worker
who crosses the continent to expose the plotters and clear himself; but his directness and
vigor partly redeem that short-coming. Not the director's fault. Cummings was always an actor with limited range and Hitchcock gets the best out of him.

There is the customary Hitchcock gallery of
lurid minor characters, including a group of
circus freaks, a saboteur whose young son has
the macabre habit of breaking his toys, and a
monstrous butler with a sadistic fondness for
a blackjack.

TRIVIA:

The shot of the ship on its side towards the end (when Fry looks out of the window on his way to the Statue of Liberty) was an actual shot of the sinking of the USS Normandie, which had been sunk at its pier in what turned out to be an actual act of sabotage. (But it was the Mafia, not Nazi spies, who did it - they were hoping to persuade the government to pay them to provide protection against Nazi sabotage.) The US Navy wanted Hitchcock to delete it from the film, but he refused.

The world premiere of Saboteur took place in the Radio City Music Hall Cinema, which itself features in a prominent sequence in the picture.

There is no on-screen credit for the actor who portrays Barry's ill-fated best friend Ken, despite the fact that he gets several lines and acts as the catalyst for the rest of the plot.

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